We might see history made tonight. Then again, in a way, we’ve already seen it. (That being said, you can count me as one who isn’t sure “the first time since…” really constitutes making history — even though it’s often expressed that way these days.)

When the Edmonton Oilers beat the Florida Panthers on Friday night, it marked the first time since 1945 that a team who had lost the first three games in a best-of-seven Stanley Cup Final came back to force a seventh game. The Toronto Maple Leafs had taken a 3–0 lead only to see Detroit win the next three before Toronto salvaged the series in Game Seven.

And, of course, if the Oilers win tonight and complete the comeback, they’ll be the first team since 1942 to successfully rally all the way back from a 3–0 deficit in games. It was also Toronto and Detroit in the Stanley Cup Final that year, as the Red Wings opened up with three straight wins before the Maple Leafs rattled off four in a row.

I’ve written about the 1942 series before, in 2017 and in 2022. You can check those out if you’d like, as I’ll try to keep this recap brief. The Leafs famously shook up their lineup after three straight losses, benching veterans Gord Drillon and Bucko McDonald. Younger and faster Don Metz and Hank Goldup were inserted into the lineup, and Gaye Stewart was summoned from the farm team in Pittsburgh. That, apparently, gave the Leafs the spark they needed … although there’s also the fact that Toronto had been a much better team than Detroit throughout the regular season, and probably should have beaten the Red Wings anyway!

There’s long been another story told about what sparked the Leafs famous 1942 comeback. It’s the type of “hockey legend” I rarely believe without proof. And, at first, the proof seems a little shaky.

As best I could find, Hap Day first tells the story in a feature by Toronto Star sportswriter Red Burnett for The Star Weekly on March 12, 1955. (Though perhaps it appears earlier in some other source, such as a Maple Leafs program?) “Hockey has been wonderful to me down through the years,” Day told Burnett. “I have two Stanley Cups that stand out in the six triumphs I shared in, one as a player and five as a coach.”

The standout memory from his playing days came in 1932, when Day captained the team to its first Stanley Cup championship under the Leafs name. “But the incident which lives the most vividly in my memory is a letter from a 14-year-old girl.”

Day explains that he received the letter just before Game Four of the Final in 1942. “I was at my wit’s end trying to figure out what angle I would take with the team that night when along came this letter. The little girl wrote that she still had faith in us and was praying for our success.

“It was a wonderful letter and I read it to the boys before that all-important game. I didn’t have to say another word. Dave Schriner, one of our veterans, got to this feet and said: ‘Coach, you don’t have to worry about this one. We’ll win it for that little girl.’ After the first shift on the ice I knew I had a hockey team. Before the game was over I sensed that Cup history would be made, that we were going to win four straight for the biggest comeback in the game’s history.”

Day told the story again to Allan Abel of The Globe and Mail on May 16, 1983. Twenty-eight years later, the girl was now 15 years old but the rest of the story is essentially the same.

Over the years, it seems, the girl — Doris Klein — has been reported as 11, 14 and 15 years old. It’s been said she was a Toronto girl living in Detroit and taking an awful ribbing from her new friends. Or, she was a girl from Toronto who was either embarrassed by, or feeling sorry for, the team.

With all the different variations, it’s easy enough to wonder if the story was true at all. However, an account from Leafs goalie Turk Broda to sportswriter Jim Hunt for The Star Weekly on March 31, 1962, would seem to confirm that it was.

“I can … still remember Hap reading us a letter from a 15-year-old girl before the fourth game,” said Broda while reminiscing about the 1942 comeback. “The girl was pleading with us to win and it was pretty dramatic. But I think Hap added a little and then as the final dramatic touch showed us the letter which he claimed was stained by her tears.”

The tear-stains have become part of the legend too. But, as Roy MacGregor wrote in The National Post on April 26, 1999, “[s]ome others – and count me among these skeptics – believe the letter was written by a middle-aged NHL coach…. [Hap Day] scribbled it on hotel stationery, folded it, stuck it in an envelope, and wrinkled it a bit for authenticity – then he headed off to Game Four.”

So, is the story true at all? Or did Day write the letter himself?

I asked friend and colleague Jonathon Jackson — who has written a dissertation about Hap Day he’s hoping to publish as a biography — what he knew about the story. Not surprisingly, Jonathon had read all the variations which had caused him to question it too. But he had come across one account from the time that seems to indicate the basic story is true. In The Toronto Star on April 15, 1942, among the recap of the Leafs’ 9–3 trouncing of Detroit in Game Five the night before, there is a series of photographs and this caption:

That pretty girl on the right is Doris Klein, Toronto maiden whose ‘pep’ note to the Leafs in Detroit drew her their admiration and honor seats at the game with her father as the team’s very special guest.

So, it seems, there was a girl, and she did write a letter.

Or else Hap Day went to a lot of trouble to convince his team she had!

Most of the posts I write for this web site — and much of the work I’m known for — is about finding the true story behind old sports tales. This story isn’t as old as many of those. Still, it dates back 53 years now, to the very beginning of my personal hockey memory. But this one is very different from what I usually write. Instead of searching for the facts, this story is sort of speculative hockey fiction.

I attended my very first NHL game (my very first hockey game of any kind) on December 30, 1970. California Golden Seals versus Toronto Maple Leafs. I have no hockey memories from before that date. That spring, the 1971 Stanley Cup Final between the Montreal Canadiens and Chicago Black Hawks was the first one I ever watched. So, I was at least slightly aware of some of what was going on as the NHL Draft approached on June 10, 1971. For example, I knew who Jean Béliveau was. And many of his Montreal teammates. Béliveau retired after a brilliant 20-year career the day before the 1971 Draft. I may have known that, but I didn’t know anything about the drama behind who the Canadiens would find to replace him.

Montreal had the first pick in the 1971 NHL Draft. This is usually attributed to the brilliance of Canadiens GM Sam Pollock. Pollock was most certainly a hockey genius, but in this case there was plenty of good luck along with his good management. Yes, Pollock may have fleeced the Golden Seals at the end of the 1969–70 season, when he sent them Montreal’s first-round pick in 1970 (California used that 10th choice to select Chris Oddleifson) along with farmhand Ernie Hicke. In return, Montreal received former Canadiens prospect François Lacombe (who they had dealt to the Seals in 1968, and who they then exposed in the 1970 Expansion Draft to be chosen by Buffalo). They also got cash and California’s first pick in 1971.

Pollock would have been well aware that two French Canadian junior superstars — Marcel Dionne and Guy Lafleur — were going to be available in the 1971 NHL Draft … but he couldn’t have known the Seals pick he acquired would wind up being number one. California was a playoff team in 1968–69 and 1969–70 and wasn’t expected to be last overall in 1970–71. But they were, which gave Montreal the first pick.

As another example of Pollock’s genius, it’s been said that when it looked like the Los Angeles Kings might actually fall behind the Golden Seals in the 1970–71 standings, the Canadiens GM sent Ralph Backstrom to Los Angeles to bolster the Kings’ roster. In point of fact, Pollock had only dealt Backstrom because the veteran player had requested a trade to a warmer climate … and the Kings were the only team to make him an offer.

So, shrewd moves for sure, but a bit of luck too.

Having acquired the top pick, newspapers in the days leading up to the draft were fairly certain the Canadiens would select Guy Lafleur. In truth, the Canadiens were undecided between Lafleur — who’d scored 103 and then 130 goals in his last two seasons with the Quebec Remparts of the Quebec Junior Hockey League — and Marcel Dionne, who had won two straight scoring titles in the tougher Ontario Hockey Association. Dionne had plenty of supporters in the Canadiens’ front office, but ex-coach-turned-scout Claude Ruel championed Lafleur as the heir apparent to Béliveau. In the end, Ruel’s enthusiasm carried the day and Pollock selected the Quebec league star with the Seals’ pick.

But what might have happened if the Canadiens chose Marcel Dionne? Does Dionne go on to become the beloved star of a Canadiens dynasty? Is Lafleur destined to become a high-scoring phenom playing mainly in obscurity and the greatest player never to win the Stanley Cup?

Both Dionne and Lafleur became superstars who went on to Hall of Fame careers, so this isn’t like the Canadiens choosing Doug Wickenheiser with the first pick in 1980 when they could have had future Hall of Famer Denis Savard. Still, how might hockey history have changed if the Canadiens picked Marcel Dionne and left Guy Lafleur for the then-dreadful Detroit Red Wings, who later traded him to the Los Angeles Kings?

It’s impossible to know for sure, but I hoped this would be an interesting thought exercise for those who had some experience with the two men. So, I reached out to several hockey people I know, and got some further help when some of those people (most notably Bob Borgen, former L.A. Kings TV producer) reached out to others on my behalf.

First on my list was Scotty Bowman, who, of course, coached Guy Lafleur on the great Montreal teams of the 1970s. He wasn’t really willing to play along, but he did share an important fact with me. Scotty was officially hired as the new Montreal coach on the morning of the 1971 NHL Draft, but he’d known Sam Pollock (and worked for him in the Canadiens system) since the 1950s. Scotty confirmed that the Montreal brass really was undecided as to who to pick between Lafleur and Dionne, but told me the Canadiens actually hoped to draft them both! “Pollock tried to acquire the #2 choice from Detroit,” Scotty said in a email, “and came so close to pulling off a huge trade the night prior to the 1971 Draft.”

I had only just heard the possibility of this when I first started reaching out to people. Turns out, the Montreal Gazette, on the day of the draft, reported the Canadiens had offered either goalie Rogatien Vachon or Phil Myre plus a defenceman to Detroit, so it wasn’t a secret. And I obviously wasn’t the first person Scotty had shared this with. Former L.A. Kings TV analyst and longtime Nashville Predators play-by-play man Pete Weber told me that Scotty had told him the story at the start of this season. “Think about how that might have gone,” said Pete, “and what that would’ve been like in Canadiens land!”

As to Montreal’s ultimate decision to go with Lafleur over Dionne, “All in all it was a good choice,” says Scotty, “but not an easy one.” When it came to my question about how their careers might have flip-flopped if Montreal chose Dionne instead, Scotty would only say: “A lot of hypothetical views for sure…. There was never a question as to the strength of the Canadiens roster compared to Detroit or Los Angeles, so my answer will always be IF IF IF.”

Another name high on my list was Dick Irvin, who covered those great 1970s Montreal teams on television. Dick also thought the strength of the rosters was the key. “My not-so-deep-thinking opinion,” he told me, “is that the Canadiens would still have won Stanley Cups and the Red Wings not. Dionne would have had better help such as good wingers (like Steve Shutt) and power-play help (like Jacques Lemaire) plus better offensive help from the Big Three on defence [Larry Robinson, Serge Savard, and Guy Lapointe]. Lafleur would not have had the same calibre of support in Detroit. He would have been their best player, but the team didn’t have nearly as many ‘best players’ as the Canadiens did.”

Most people I spoke to also assumed Dionne would have thrived in Montreal. Ron McLean said, “I think Marcel was a playmaker a la Wayne [Gretzky] and would have fed [Steve] Shutt the way he fed [Mickey] Redmond in Detroit and [Charlie] Simmer/[Dave] Taylor in L.A.”

Dionne was a star from the start of his career, but had a breakout year with the Red Wings in his fourth season of 1974–75. He had 121 points (47 goals, 74 assists) to finish third in the NHL in scoring race before moving on to Los Angeles. Conversely, Lafleur struggled in his first three seasons in Montreal to the point where people thought he was a bust. His breakout came that same 1974–75 season when he had 53 goals and 66 assists for 119 points. (Bobby Orr led the NHL that season with 135 points, ahead of teammate Phil Esposito who had 127).

“Guy emerged, it is, said when he ditched the helmet,” wrote Ron of the Lafleur legend that says the added element of danger in playing bareheaded brought out the best in him. If their careers had been flipped, “Hollywood would have nudged that,” thought Ron, “but in Detroit who knows?”

Stan Fischler was a big part of the hockey scene during the careers of Dionne and Lafleur. Though he never covered them directly, he believes Dionne would have thrived in Montreal and been welcomed by the fans there both for his francophone heritage and for his talent. He also feels Lafleur would have succeeded in L.A. because the Hollywood crowd would have welcomed him as as they later did Gretzky. “Genius will out,” says Stan.

But I wasn’t sure. “I definitely think Dionne is a star in Montreal. Less sure how Lafleur makes out. Yours is a good theory, but Gretzky brought his star to L.A. Would ‘The Flower’ have blossomed in Detroit first?”

“Good question,” said Stan. “So much also depends on linemates; media treatment. As my Dad would say, ‘You can guess til the cows come home.’”

And really, guessing is all anyone can do. Still, a few people were unsure how Lafleur might have fared if he’d started in Detroit.

Roy MacGregor has covered plenty of hockey in his long career as a journalist and author. (The Washington Post once declared him to be “the closest thing there is to a poet laureate of Canadian hockey.”) He’s written features on both Lafleur and Dionne, and mentioned on the phone how insecure Lafleur was as a young player. He needed the intensive coaching he got in Montreal — and the star talent around him — to bring out his best. Feeling there was no way he would have gotten that if he’d begun his career in Detroit, Roy wondered if Lafleur may have withered as a Red Wing.

Ted Mahovlich doesn’t think so. The son of Frank Mahovlich (and author of a book about him), knew Lafleur mostly as a young fan when his father played in Montreal and later got to know Dionne (and write a book about him) while travelling with the NHL Oldtimers. Like the others, he feels the big difference between the two players was the talent they played with.

“In Guy’s first eight seasons with the Habs, how many Hall of Famers did he play with? In Marcel’s first eight years in L.A., how many Hall of Famers did he play with?”

Even so, Ted believes Lafleur’s talent would have made him a star in Los Angeles. He also believes that, even if they might not have worshipped Dionne and his more workmanlike superstardom in the same way they lavished their acclaim on Lafleur’s showmanship, Montreal fans would have loved Dionne differently. “Think about the people you’ve loved in your life. Did you love them all the same way?”

Stu Hackel offered a more critical voice than anyone I spoke to. Stu is a former NHL executive — Director of Broadcasting, Publishing and Video — a lifelong hockey fan and a longtime hockey (and music) writer who I got to know during my years working for the NHL in my publishing role with Dan Diamond and Associates. “I think both careers would have been different,” wrote Stu, “and history might have been somewhat different too.”

Like Roy MacGregor, Stu wondered what would have become of Lafleur if he’d been drafted anywhere but Montreal. “As you know, he wasn’t GUY LAFLEUR during his first three seasons in Montreal and there [were] even rumours they’d trade him. There’s been lots suggested about how and why he came into his own, from taking off his helmet to personal maturity, his marriage to Lise and birth of his first son Martin, on and on. But I think the reason has more to do with the Canadiens commitment to developing him, making him better, working him tirelessly during and after practice, and his own desire to improve.”

Especially important were the long hours put in by Claude Ruel in helping Lafleur reach his full potential and greatness. “The question,” said Stu, “is would the Red Wings or Kings have done that, or even been able to do that, considering the relatively ramshackle nature of those franchises compared to the Canadiens? There’s only one answer. No.”

Stu believes Ruel is “the secret ingredient” and a necessary one in Lafleur’s rise to greatness. “Plus,” he adds, “Lafleur had the greatest head coach of all time behind the bench and Scotty knew exactly how to handle Lafleur. (He didn’t pressure him.) I can’t imagine that happening in Detroit, where they seemed to change coaches every few months…. I don’t think whatever other club he theoretically might have played for as a young man other than Canadiens would have had the benefit of his superstardom.”

As for Dionne in Montreal, “[He] would have made them a different team,” Stu believes. “Think about their top centers in Lafleur’s first few seasons and his prime: Jacques Lemaire and Pete Mahovlich. One of those top centers would have to go in favour of Dionne. I don’t know how they’d decide which one. Lemaire was such a smart and complete player and Pete had size that Dionne did not. Going head-to-head with the other top teams of the time, the Flyers, the Sabres, the Bruins, I don’t think the matchups are as favourable to Canadiens without one of Lemaire and Mahovlich, despite Dionne’s motor and excessive skill. Those are all big and physical clubs. I don’t think Dionne fares as well as either Lemaire or Mahovlich against them. He’s no slouch, of course, so maybe the Habs still win a few Cups. But five? And four in a row? Seems to me unlikely.”

My old boss, Dan Diamond, who’d spent some time in Montreal during the Canadiens ’70s dynasty, disagreed with Stu. “Lafleur would have found a way to be a top star,” Dan believes, “and Dionne would have played a different but powerful role with a differently configured Habs team on which the top forwards would assume slightly different roles. [Ken] Dryden, Scotty and the superior defence unchanged.”

Most of the opinions so far have been somewhat Montreal-centric.

So, what about the view from Los Angeles?

Bob Miller spent 44 years as a play-by-play announcer on radio and TV with the Kings from 1973 until his retirement in 2017. Like the others, he believes the key difference was the supporting cast Lafleur had in Montreal that Dionne lacked in Los Angeles. “Lafleur was surrounded by numerous Hall of Fame candidates as his teammates,” says Bob. “When Dionne joined the Kings, he and Rogie Vachon were the only true superstars.” But Dionne “had unlimited passion, drive, and desire,” and Bob believes that would have served him well if he’d landed in Montreal.

“In my opinion,” writes Bob, “Marcel would have been equally as revered as Lafleur because Dionne was also a native of Quebec and was a TRUE goal scorer and superstar. He may not have had the speed of Lafleur, nor the ‘flowing locks,’ but with the popularity and publicity the Canadians received in Montreal and Quebec he would have benefited from that publicity blitz and from the success the team enjoyed.”

As for how Lafleur would have fared in Los Angeles, “I believe Kings fans would have been thrilled with his talent and especially his goal scoring ability,” says Bob, “but, off the ice, since I didn’t really know him that well, I wonder how he would adapt to the overall reception in L.A.?  With 12 pro teams and two major college teams, the widespread notoriety he received in Montreal might not be the same as in that hockey-crazed market.”

Bob further wondered about Lafleur’s relationship with the fans in Montreal and how that might have translated to Los Angeles. “Was he involved, approachable, friendly and down to earth? Or was he aloof? At that time, it was very important that he join the efforts to try and promote the game in the L.A. market.”

I didn’t know the answer to that, but I knew who would.

“Guy Lafleur, early on in his career, had a very shy personality,” said Scotty Bowman, “but he was always the most pleasant guy you could ever imagine.”

Dick Irvin elaborated. “Lafleur was terrific with the fans. In my experience, I never heard of him refusing to sign an autograph or not showing up at a charity event. I was involved in organizing a few of those over the years and whenever Guy was asked he showed up right on time. And not only in Montreal. I recall the first time the Canadiens played in Calgary when, after the game, security finally had to get him out of the mob of autograph-seekers so the team bus could leave for the airport to get on their charter. He was signing everything for everybody.

“I am sure he would have worked very hard to help sell the game in L.A.,” said Dick.

There’s no real way to know how their careers — and hockey history — might have been different, but Bob Miller sums it up nicely when he says: “Montreal could not go wrong whether they picked Lafleur or Dionne. Both are all-time great players.”

I received another email from Don Weekes recently. He’s the guy who got me going on the Fred Waghorne story two months ago. This time, Don was asking about the derivation of the hockey term ‘deke’ … which isn’t used as much as it used to be since the cool kids decided they prefer the term ‘dangle’ (which I don’t like!).

For those who don’t know, the word deke (or dangle) refers to when the puck-carrier makes moves to fake out the goalie or another opposing player. The easy answer to where the word comes from is that it’s a short form of the word decoy.

The longer answer is a little more interesting.

According to the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary:

Deke originated as a shortened form of decoy. American writer Ernest Hemingway used deke as a noun referring to hunting decoys in a number of his works, including his 1950 novel Across the River and into the Trees (“I offered to put the dekes out with him”). In the 1940s, deke began appearing in ice-hockey contexts in Canadian print sources in reference to the act of faking an opponent out of position—much like how decoy is used for luring one into a trap.

The Oxford English Dictionary has things happening later, noting a Time magazine story about Dickie Moore in 1960 as the source:

On the ice, Moore is one of the league’s best players in the split-second art of faking a goalie out of position. ‘I’ve developed a little play of my own,’ he says. ‘It’s a kind of fake shot—we call them “deeks” for decoys’.

Apparently, The Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles Online says it took a few more years for the word to be spelled as deke.

But that certainly isn’t the case.

The story about Dickie Moore and deek/deke made the rounds again after his death on December 19, 2015. His obituary in Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper resulted in four straight days of letters to the editor that attracted the attention of writer Gregory Bryce, who commented on it in his WordWatching column for the Whitehorse Star on January 8, 2016.

Bryce reports that the first letter quoted the Oxford English Dictionary and the 1960 Time story. The second letter writer argues that “Dickie Moore may have invented the term ‘deek,’ but he most certainly did not invent” the move. The third letter was from a woman who said that, as a young girl in a small Ohio town in the 1950s, she played tackle football with the boys and “was always picked for a team because of my speed and ‘deaking’ ability.”

The fourth letter states: “While several dictionaries do indeed date the term’s first appearance in print to the Nov. 21, 1960 edition of Time, it was feinting its way through hockey’s lexicon long before that. Writing in the Toronto Daily Star on March 3, 1937, for instance, Andy Lytle described Toronto Maple Leafs owner and manager Conn Smythe watching his team practise, ‘squirming in sympathy as Apps or Conacher would burst through and “deke” [Leafs goalie Turk] Broda.”

Turns out that letter, which appeared in The Globe on January 1, 2016, was written by my friend and colleague Stephen Smith, and when I went looking for the term in newspapers after receiving Don’s email some eight years later, I also came across that 1937 story. So, it certainly seems that “deke” is older than the 1960s, the 1950s, and even the 1940s.

But how old?

Using the terms “deke” and “hockey” together, I found hits in Canadian newspapers going back to the 1890s, American papers to the 1880s, and British newspapers to the 1830s. And yet, in most of those early hits, the article was as likely as not to be about someone whose last name was Hockey … or Rockey … and instead of “deke” it was often Duke.

Even into the 1900s, when the search term “hockey” almost always hit on the ice sport, you’d get Duke, or desk, or disk, or duck for “deke”. And when you did actually get the word deke, it was almost always someone whose name, or nickname was Deke, or a reference to the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, whose sports teams — and even whose general members — were often referred to as the Dekes.

But when all was said and done, the earliest usage of deke as a hockey term really does seem to come in 1937 … although a month before that March 3 Toronto Star article.

In an earlier column for The Star on February 9, 1937, Andy Lytle quotes a conversation he’d had with Turk Broda in which the Leafs rookie goalie rated Neil Colville and Cecil Dillon of the New York Rangers near the top of his list of troublesome opponents.

“That Colville,” says Broda, “he dekes me.”

“He what?” responds Lytle.

“Dekes me,” Broda explains. “D-e-k-e-s. You know. Makes me take the first move then makes a sucker of me.”

Now, Lytle had been a newspaper man in Vancouver since about 1914. He wrote for the Vancouver Sun starting around 1921 and was their sports editor for years before moving to Toronto in 1934. So, he knew hockey … but he doesn’t appear to be familiar with the term “deke.”

Lytle was obviously enamoured of the new word, and used it in his lede the next day after the Rangers’ 5–1 victory over Toronto at Maple Leaf Gardens. “Five times last night,” writes Lytle, “Lester Patrick’s Rangers ‘deked’ our Mr. Broda and all we got back in return was a third period goal by Gordon Drillon.”

So, clearly, NHL players were using the word deke as early as 1937. It’s hard to believe Broda was the only one … unless he’s the one who actually coined the phrase. (No proof of that yet.) Still, it doesn’t really seem to become prevalent in hockey writing until the 1940s.

The earliest reference to deke in a Montreal paper appears to come in a Dink Carroll column in The Gazette on December 31, 1941. In that column, Paul Thompson (who was then coaching the Black Hawks) speaks of his improvement as an NHL player in Chicago from 1931 to 1939 after struggling in New York from 1926 through 1931:

“You get smarter as you go along,” said Thompson. “Instead of freezing when you get inside a defence and find you’ve got only the goalie to beat, you start using your noodle…. You take a good look first and see if there’s an opening. If there isn’t, you try to make one by faking the goalie out of position. ‘Making a deke,’ we call it. If you can get him to make the first move, you’ve got him beat…”

Interestingly, the first use of the word deke I found as an actual short form for decoy in a story about ducks comes in The Modesto Bee (of Modesto, California) in 1940. So, perhaps the hockey players actually beat the hunters — and Hemingway! — to this one.

But probably not… Deke as a short form of decoy just seems to make too much sense.

The city of Owen Sound officially celebrated the 1924 Memorial Cup victory of the Owen Sound Greys 100 years ago today, on April 2, 1924. The Greys had won Canada’s national junior hockey championship on Friday, March 28, 1924. Following a 5–3 victory over the Calgary Canadians in the opener of the two-game, total-goals series in Winnipeg two nights before, the Greys claimed the title with a 2–2 tie that gave them the series by a score of 7–5.

As the Owen Sound Sun-Times reported on the morning of Saturday, March 29, the Greys “will lose no time leaving Winnipeg on their way to the old home town.” They were booked to leave the Manitoba capital via a Canadian National Railway train on Sunday morning, March 30. According to the Sun-Times, if the Greys’ train was on time, it would arrive in Toronto by 7:20 a.m. on April 1, giving the team “an hour to catch a train for Owen Sound arriving here on Tuesday at noon.”

Perhaps the train out of Winnipeg was delayed because, while the Greys did arrive in Toronto on the morning of April 1, they spent the rest of the day there and stayed overnight at the Windermere Hotel. Located at 232 Jarvis Street, just around the corner from the Mutual Street Arena, the Windermere had been the Greys’ home-away-from home in Toronto throughout the 1923–24 season. (The hotel had also been home to the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds while they were in Toronto en route to winning the Allan Cup — Canada’s national senior championship — and was “patting itself on the back” for having hosted both teams, reported the Sault Star.)

According to the Toronto Star, “[tomorrow the Greys] will land in Owen Sound at noon, and they will get a welcome that will make the natives think Victoria Day, Dominion Day, and Christmas Day all fall on April 2 this year.”

The party started even before the Greys’ train from Toronto arrived in Owen Sound at 1 pm (not noon). As the Sun-Times reported, during stops in Hanover, Dobbinton, Tara, and Shallow Lake, there were brief receptions for the team at each station. In Owen Sound, businesses had been encouraged to shutdown from noon to 3:30, and shop fronts and store windows were decorated to mark the occasion. Every car owner in the city was encouraged to be at the train station about 20 minutes head of the scheduled arrival to form a parade to city hall.

In a city of just 12,000 people, 8,000 citizens lined the parade route. As the train pulled into the station, “all the whistles in the city let loose, and the train came to a stop in the middle of a wildly cheering mob of fans.” Each player was cheered individually as they got off the train and made their way to bench seats mounted on a huge truck. “[Team manager] Jimmy Jamieson was in charge of the OHA trophy, while [coach] Earl Hicks held the Memorial Cup where all might see it.”

As the truck left for City Hall, it was accompanied by others from the city fire department “with sirens shrieking and bells ringing.” These trucks were followed by The City Band, a parade of Alderman, the Grey Regiment Highland Pipe Band, and members of the city trades and labour councils. Students from the Owen Sound Collegiate Institute surrounded the team truck and marched in the parade. The Orangeman’s Fife and Drum band headed a procession of cars bearing the parents and relatives of the players, while another Highland Pipe Band led the rest of the cars.

The bulk of the large crowd was already waiting in the Market Square behind City Hall. “All pent up enthusiasm which has been welling in the hearts of people was let loose when the truck came to a stop and led by Mayor Christie cheer after cheer rent the air, and when they were through cheering someone started it again, and another series was given and by the time the crowd became quiet the truck was completely surrounded, and jammed in so thick that it was impossible to make a move.”

Mayor W.J. (William James) Christie made a short speech, which was followed by another from the president of the Board of Trade, former mayor William T. Harris. “Everybody is happy, and why not?” Harris shouted. “Everybody is glad they are Owen Sounders, and why not? We are proud of the Greys, and why not?”

Then, manager Jimmy Jamieson was called on to speak on behalf of the team. Before he could, the fans shouted for Hedley Smith, the 16-year-old goalie who was recognized as the star of the final game. Smith was “forced to stand up on top of the hood of the truck, where everyone could get a good view of him, and he was cheered to the echo by the enthusiastic crowd.” When Jamieson’s speech ended, and the event broke up, “Smith was carried to a waiting auto on the shoulders of a number of his admirers, and was soon on his way home, as were the other members of the team.” The reception was then brought to a close by the singing of the National Anthem.

That evening, city council hosted the team and local family members for a dinner at the Paterson House hotel beginning at 6 o’clock. At 8 p.m., a series of events were staged at three local theaters — the Opera House (now the Roxy Theatre), the Classic Theatre, and the Savoy Theatre — with songs and speeches. The players put in an appearance at each show, and apparently were presented with commemorative pocket watches from the city at each of the first two stops. It was all a fitting conclusion to a season that had seen Owen Sound give its team tremendous support all the way to the Memorial Cup.

It’s not clear what the capacity was at the Riverside Arena, where the Greys played their home games. Built between September and January of 1912–13 (and destroyed by a fire in 1944), the Riverside Arena — located near the current site of the downtown Shoppers Drug Mart at 10th Street and 1st Avenue West — was the city’s main hockey rink until the Owen Sound Arena was built in 1938. Even so, pictures and information are hard to come by. A story from 1921 notes a capacity crowd of “about 2,000 people” at a game that season, so we can assume the Riverside Arena held about that many fans. Perhaps a few more than that had been sneaking in to some of the Greys’ 11 home games in 1923–24.

“Owners of ladders in the vicinity of Riverside Arena have been wondering lately where their property has been vanishing to,” reported the Sun-Times on February 5, 1924. “They found out today when a collection was rounded up around the rink. The youngsters have been borrowing the ladders for the purpose of watching the hockey matches free of charge. They set the ladders to the windows just back of the balcony and manage somehow to clamber in. The rink management figure if they can keep tab of the ladders they can solve the problem of non-paying spectators.”

With the majority of their games on the road during the 1923–24 seasons, Greys fans were known to ride the rails to Toronto in large numbers to take in the games there. In fact, after winning the OHA championship against Kitchener in Toronto, Mayor Christie declared a half-holiday in Owen Sound three days later (March 17, 1924), so those who wished to could leave work early to catch a train to Toronto for the Greys one-game playoff that night with the champions of the Northern Ontario Hockey Association, the North Bay Trappers. The Sun-Times on game day noted that 200 fans had left for Toronto on the early train, and with the half-day holiday, it’s not unlikely that more made their way there on a later train. “Tonight will look like Grey Country night in Toronto,” the paper said, “and if the Greys win it will sound like it too.”

The Toronto Star noted that attendance for the Greys–Trappers game was the largest of the season in Toronto, “amateur or professional,” although no numbers were reported. (The Mutual Street Arena held about 7,500 for hockey.) North Bay led 1–0 early and 2–1 until midway through the second, but third-period goals from Owen Sound stars Cooney Weiland and Butch Keeling (his second of the game) proved the difference. As the Greys held on for a 4–2 victory in their toughest game of the season to that point, The Globe reported that “Owen Sound supporters kept up a continuous din and noise during the last seven minutes. They knew that their favorites were ‘in’ and that North Bay was fighting a losing cause.”

Those who stayed behind in Owen Sound followed the game through a bulletin service provided by the Sun-Times and celebrated the victory with bonfires and fireworks. When the team returned home the next day, the town was decked out in flags and bunting and 5,000 fans were on hand to greet them. A day later (March 19), it was back to Toronto to face the Quebec champions from Westmount High School. Junior hockey in Quebec was believed to be weak, and no one expected much of a contest, so the crowd in Toronto was small that night. Still, the 18–3 romp for the Greys — behind eight goals from Keeling — must have been a surprise.

After the game, the Greys went directly from the arena to Union Station, where a train due to leave at 10:45 was delayed about 15 minutes to wait for them. The team was heading directly to Winnipeg, where they would arrive nine hours behind schedule around 11 p.m. on Friday night, March 21. Before playing for the Memorial Cup, the Greys had to catch another train at 9 a.m. the next morning to make a short trip back to Ontario to face the Kenora Thistles, who were champions of the Thunder Bay District. Game one in that series was on Saturday night, March 22, at 8:30 Central Time.

Despite reminders in the Sun-Times, not everyone at home in Owen Sound was aware of the time difference. Thousands of people began showing up outside the Sun-Times office at 8 p.m. Eastern. They had to wait more than two hours before reports began to show up around 10:30 local time. Soon, updates were arriving fast and furious. And as they had been thought the season, local telephone operators were kept busy with calls requesting updates.

The final score in an 11–7 Greys victory didn’t come in until well after midnight, but there were still some 3,000 fans waiting in the street to cheer the news. Two nights later, the Greys would suffer just their second loss of the season (and first since December) in a 5–4 Kenora victory. Both captain Larry Cain and manager Jimmy Jamieson claimed Owen Sound was cheated out of the tying goal by the goal judge, but the Greys still took the two-game series by a total score of 15–12.

For the Memorial Cup games, crowds of 4,500 and 5,000 stood in the streets of Owen Sound awaiting what would be quite detailed reports from Winnipeg which the Sun-Times displayed with bulletins and lantern slides. Goals from Keeling in the first and second periods, two from Weiland in the third, plus 34 saves on the night from Hedley Smith (who was knocked cold in the third period, but stayed in the game), led the Greys to a 5–3 victory.

Winnipeg papers claimed Calgary outplayed Owen Sound in the second game, but everyone hailed Hedley Smith as the hero after he stopped nine shots in the first period, 16 in the second, and 24 in the third to preserve a 2–2 tie. Still, Jimmy Jamieson claimed the Greys played exactly as ordered, and that after Cooney Weiland scored early in the first period (he would score again late in the third) the team went into a defensive shell. Yes, Smith was called on to make 49 saves, but most of the shots, Jamieson said, came from long range and few were really dangerous.

Still, in Calgary, a headline in the Herald said “Superior Goal Tending of Smith Deciding Factor” and the game story claimed the 16-year-old Owen Sound goalie (he would turn 17 on April 23) “showed form that rivalled the best in paid company.” Sports editor W.J. Finlay of the Manitoba Free Press thought Smith “stood out last night like a brilliant gem amid clear darkness,” using his “magic stick [and] lithe and flashing body [to] turn aside bullet drives and barrage-like attacks.” A story from Winnipeg to The Globe in Toronto said, “Owen Sound citizens, who are proud of their valiant young athletes, should erect a monument in memory of the performance of Hedley Smith.”

Smith himself credited the entire team. In reflecting on the 1924 victory in a 1962 story in the Sun-Times, Smith said: “Although we had nine players on the roster, most of the time six played the whole game. Teams change players at a fast rate today and this makes for a faster brand of hockey, but don’t ever think that Weiland, Keeling, Cain, [Teddy] Graham, and [Fred] Elliott couldn’t go if they had to. We had a terrific defense that year, and the opposition had few chances to work in for close shots. They were mostly long ones as Graham and Cain kept the players away from the net.”

In putting up their 22-2-2 record en route to the Memorial Cup a century ago, the Greys outscored their opponents 204-69

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            *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Part III – By George, It’s Fred!

One hundred years later, there’s reason to doubt Owen Sound’s success during the 1923–24 season. Not that they weren’t a dominant team. Judging by their record — and newspaper reports from all across the country — they certainly were. But, they may have cheated! Perhaps they didn’t know it … but somebody must have!

After defeating Kitchener to win the OHA championship on March 14, 1924, the Greenshirts announced they would protest the Greys’ victory. Kitchener team secretary Eddie Hearn notified the Ontario Hockey Association they believed Owen Sound’s George Elliott was really Fred Elliott playing under the birth certificate of his younger brother. A formal protest was made the following day.

Elliott had come to Owen Sound in the fall of 1923 from his hometown of Clinton, Ontario. He even seems to have attended high school in Owen Sound, as an 18-year-old should have. But, strangely, throughout the 1923–24 season, newspapers seemed to flip-flop in referring to him as both George and Fred — although mostly Fred. It appears he was registered with the OHA that season as George Fred Elliott, and the Greys’ official championship photo after that season identifies him as G.F. Elliott … but it ain’t necessarily so.

Kitchener’s protest was formally made on Saturday, March 15 and presented to Greys manager Jimmy Jamieson in Toronto that evening. “Word through Manager Jamieson to local executive men and from officials discount the protest,” reported the Owen Sound Sun-Times on Monday, March 17. “It is pointed out that Elliott was given a certificate by the OHA and that he played against Milverton, near which town he lives without any remarks from the Milverton management. As Elliott played for Clinton it is certain that Milverton knew that his playing was in order.”

Indeed, both Fred Elliott (a defenseman and forward) and his brother George (a goalie) had played for Clinton against Milverton during the 1922–23 season. George Elliott was still playing goal for the Clinton junior team when Milverton defeated them for the OHA Group 14 title in 1923–24. So, certainly, Milverton knew who the two brothers were. Still, they didn’t necessarily know their birth dates, and that would seem to be the issue more so than their names.

As Jamieson had confidently predicted, the OHA dismissed the Greenshirts’ protest at a noon meeting on March 19. (If it had been upheld, the Greys would have been disqualified, their wins against Kitchener and North Bay wiped out, and those two teams would have played off to continue their Memorial Cup hunt.) As it was, a lawyer representing the Kitchener team “had practically no evidence of any nature,” the Sun-Times said. “On the other hand, the Owen Sound club had Elliott’s birth certificate, his hockey registration certificate, an affidavit from himself, and affidavits from his parents to the effect that he was George Fred Elliott, mentioned in his certificate, which gives his date of birth as 1905.”

But he wasn’t George Fred Elliott! And he wasn’t born in 1905.

Genealogical records confirm that George Franklin Elliott of Clinton, Ontario, really was born in 1905, but our friend “Frecky” as Fred was known, was actually Frederick H. (Henry) Elliott … and he was born in 1903. Given OHA rules required that a player had not yet reached his 20th birthday on the first day of January in the season in which he intended competing — and that Elliott would have been almost 21 by January 1, 1924 — he was most certainly overage. Someone in the family must have forged the records somehow.

The Greys might not have known this, but certainly Fred and his parents did!

The 1911 Canadian Census has the spelling of the family name as Elliot, but it clearly shows eldest child Frederick as the 8-year-old son of William and his wife Ada with his birth noted as February 1903. George is 6 with his birth listed as February 1905. The 1921 Census has no dates, but Frederick is now 18 and George 16. (There are also younger siblings Reta and John who have similarly aged 10 years.) Furthermore, the Clinton News-Record of February 19, 1903, has a birth notice for twin boys born to Mr. and Mrs W.J. Elliott the previous day; February 18. Interestingly, Ontario birth records available through Ancestry (thank you Jonathon Jackson!) list William John Elliott (who, according to the Clinton newspaper, died just two weeks later on March 3) and Frederick H. Elliott being born on February 17, 1903…

But this is most certainly the same person.

And he was NOT born in 1905.

So, somebody got away with something!

I’ve lived in Owen Sound since the fall of 2006. Admittedly, I haven’t been a very good fan of the Owen Sound Attack. Still, the history of hockey here has a hold on me. With a population of just over 20,000 people, Owen Sound is by far the smallest market in the Ontario Hockey League, and is third-smallest in the Canadian Hockey League behind Swift Current in the Western Hockey League (circa 18,000) and Acadia-Bathurst (circa 13,000) in the Quebec Maritime Junior Hockey League. One hundred years ago this month, in March of 1924, the Owen Sound Greys became the first small-town team to win the Memorial Cup. In 1927, the Greys became the first team from a city of any size to win the Memorial Cup twice.

Emblematic of the junior championship of Canada, the Memorial Cup was established in 1919 to honour those who died in service to Canada during World War I. First won by the University of Toronto Schools team, it was won by three different Winnipeg teams in three of the next four years. Fort William won the Memorial Cup in 1922, but with a population of about 36,000 (that may actually include Port Arthur too), the city was roughly three times as large as Owen Sound, which had a population of only 12,000 people in 1924.

Hockey in Owen Sound is thought to date back to the 1880s. According to research by Paul White, the first formal game here was played by a team of local bankers circa 1888. An indoor skating rink opened in Owen Sound in January of 1893, which proved to been a big boon to hockey in the city, but there had already been a “town” team to take on the bankers by 1892. On December 6, 1897, The Globe newspaper in Toronto wrote of a league being formed with Owen Sound, Shelburne, Markdale, and Dundalk. On December 12, 1898, The Globe reported that the Owen Sound Collegiate (high school) hockey team had been reorganized, indicating that there had already been a high school team previously. On February 8, 1900, The Globe reported on a game to be played that night between the Owen Sound and Orangeville Ladies Hockey clubs.

The Owen Sound Greys (or Grays as they were known in early days) was a name given to the town’s junior hockey team around 1912 or 1913. It seems the name had less to do with the fact that Owen Sound is the county seat of Grey County and more with the fact that Bill Hancock — a referee and tailor working in town — was asked to coach the team and outfitted them in grey sweaters and socks with a red band.

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 slowed down the advancement of junior hockey in Owen Sound, but the Greys were back and ready to flourish in the 1920s. By the 1923–24 season, the Greys featured homegrown stars and future NHLers Melvin “Butch” Keeling (his father was a butcher) and Teddy Graham. Though they were only 18 and 19 years old that season, they were both said to be in their fourth year with the team.

Another local star was goalie Hedley Smith, who moved from Toronto to Owen Sound around 1917. He was just 16 years old in 1923–24, and in his first full year with the Greys after having played for them briefly the year before while starring for the Owen Sound Collegiate Institute high school team. Keeling, Smith, and Graham (who were all still attending OSCI) grew up within a few blocks of each other on 4th Avenue West in Owen Sound, and had attended the Victoria School (which was also on the same street). All were coached by Henry Kelso, for whom Kelso beach in Owen Sound is named, and who also lived on 4th Avenue West! Victoria School was a local powerhouse, and Smith was said to have won four straight hockey championships there before moving on to high school.

For the 1923–24 season, the Greys added Larry Cain from Newmarket, Ontario and Fred “Frecky” Elliott (AKA George) of Clinton, Ontario. Still, the key out-of-town recruit had come the year before when Ralph “Cooney” Weiland of Egmondville joined the team in 1922–23 after four seasons playing near home in Seaforth, Ontario. Weiland was only 17 that season, but came to Owen Sound to finish high school and apprentice as a drug clerk in a local pharmacy. A star center who addition to the team caused Butch Keeling to move to left wing, Weiland has traditionally been credited with 68 goals in 25 games for the Greys in 1923–24 (the Society for International Hockey Research has him with 70 goals in just 24 games) while Keeling had 62 in all 26 games. (SIHR shows him with “only” 61 goals in those 26 games.)

The story of the 1924 Memorial Cup championship begins on October 29, 1923, at the Arcadia Dance Hall — “over Owen Sound Garage” — and to the music of the Bon Ton Orchestra. A story in the Owen Sound Sun-Times on October 23 reports it was hoped that 500 tickets would be sold for the benefit dance. An account of the evening in the October 30 paper notes only 200 attendees but says “the hall was filled with a merry throng of dancers who tripped the light fantastic…” The evening was called “a splendid success,” and it was said that “[t]he net proceeds of the Dance will considerably augment the funds of the Hockey Club.”

Hockey training got started a little over two weeks later on November 15, when most of the team was present for a workout at the local YMCA. Road work (jogging?) commenced on November 19. It was already known that the Greys would kick off the season in Toronto in early December as part of the annual Sportsman’s Patriotic Association (SPA) tournament at the Mutual Street Arena, but there would be no ice available in Owen Sound’s Riverside Arena (a natural ice facility that required cold weather) until later in December.

The Greys wouldn’t actually hold their first practice until they arrived in Toronto and got onto the artificial ice surface there two days ahead of their opening game on December 7, 1923. Even so, they scored a 3–2 win over Conn Smythe’s University of Toronto Varsity juniors that night and Canadian Press reports noted their already being a favourite to win the Ontario Hockey Association title. But after a 4–3 win over the Parkdale Canoe Club a week later, the Greys lost the SPA championship to St. Mary’s in a 3–1 defeat on December 19. That same Toronto team had knocked out the Greys in the OHA playoffs the previous season, but this loss would prove only a minor setback.

The OHA had 64 junior teams playing in 18 regional groups for the 1923–24 season. (Some records show 20 groups, but a few were combined from two groups to one.) Owen Sound was in Group 16 with Collingwood, Meaford, and Stayner. However, while those three cities play the others two times each at home and two on the road for a four-game Section A “regular season,” the Greys (who were much further west) were placed alone in Section B. Throughout the month of January, while Collingwood, Meaford, and Stayner played each other, Owen Sound stayed home. The Greys hosted four Toronto junior teams and an intermediate squad from Listowel in five games they won in mostly lopsided romps. After Collingwood won all four OHA games they played, the Greys met the Shipbuilders in a two-game, total-goals Group 16 final to decide which team would advance to the provincial playoffs.

Game one of the Group 16 final took place in Collingwood on January 31, 1924. It was the first time the Greys had played on the road since the SPA final in mid December. The Shipbuilders got off to a fast start, firing several shots at Hedley Smith, who stopped them all. Cooney Weiland put the Greys on top midway through the period, and it was all Owen Sound after that. Weiland with three, Fred Elliott with three, and Butch Keeling with two led the way to a 9–3 victory. Collingwood was unable to field a full team for the return match in Owen Sound on February 4, so the Shipbuilders added a few intermediate players. This forced them to default, although the game was played anyway … and the Greys scored a crushing 14–1 victory with Weiland scoring four this time, Elliott three, and Keeling two.

Two more lopsided exhibition wins followed, before the Greys met Milverton in the first round of the OHA provincial playoffs. When Milverton led 2–1 after the first period of the series opener on February 14, it was the first time Owen Sound had trailed anyone after one period but the hometown Greys recovered for a 6–2 win. Four nights later in Milverton, it was a 9–2 victory to take the series by a combined score of 15–4. Next came two more one-sided playoff wins against the Varsity Juniors, followed by a bye through the quarterfinals and a direct spot in the OHA semifinals.

With no games on their schedule for two weeks after defeating Varsity, an exhibition was arranged at the Riverside Arena against a picked team of Toronto All-Stars on February 29. A 12–4 victory that night marked the Greys last game on home ice this season, but there was still plenty more hockey to play.

The team traveled to Toronto for a sudden death OHA semifinal against the Kingston Circle Six on March 7 and won it 11–0. The Circle Six were said to be one of the hardest checking teams in junior hockey, but Owen Sound’s speed and clever “combination play” (passing game) carried the day. Keeling scored six times, including three in the third period when Weiland added two to the goal he’d scored earlier for yet another hat trick.

Next up was the OHA Final against the Kitchener Greenshirts, with Kitchener playing their home game 100 years ago tonight, on March 12, 1924, in London on the new artificial ice rink there because of warm weather at home. For the same reason, Owen Sound arranged for their “home” game two nights later to be played in Toronto.

After a 7–2 win in game one, the London Free Press said: “The Owen Sound Greys proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that 1924 is their championship year…. A big crowd of fans witnessed what was a revelation to many. Speed and plenty of it carried the Greys from the North all over their opponents.” The London paper praised the forward line of Weiland, Keeling, and Elliott, calling them “a wonderful scoring machine.” The Toronto Mail and Empire was particularly impressed by the work of the two wingers. “Keeling was undoubtably the star of the game … [while] Elliott also shot wonderfully well.” Still, it was Weiland who led all scorers with another hat trick. He “played his position perfectly, but that also goes for the rest of the players…. Larry Cain and [Teddy] Graham played very steady hockey on the defense and their speed on the attack dazzled the Kitchener kids.”

Game two in Toronto on March 14, 1924 was something of a shock. Kitchener led Owen Sound 5–2 after two periods to pull within two goals in the total-goal series. “There was real anxiety in the Owen Sound camp,” reported the Sun-Times, “… [but] it was in the last frame that the class, the condition, and the machine-like training of the Owen Sound boys shone out again.”

Goals from Weiland, Graham and Weiland again (along with Elliott’s first-period marker, and Keeling’s in the second) salvaged a 5–5 tie and gave the Greys a 12–7 win overall. There was some disappointment that after running up 16 wins in a row, the tie apparently left the team one win short of the OHA record of 17 consecutive wins held by the New Hamburg intermediates. Still, the Greys had earned the first OHA championship in Owen Sound history.

Next time, we’ll follow the OHA champion Greys through the Memorial Cup playoffs of 100 years ago and see how Owen Sound celebrated the national title.

Last month, I received an email from Don Weekes. (For those of you who don’t know, Don is a fellow hockey historian/author who has written several books of hockey trivia and hockey firsts, as well as Picturing the Game: An Illustrated Story of Hockey, which was — for my money — the best hockey book of 2023.)

In his email, Don asked: Have you done or seen any (solid) research on Fred Waghorne and the face-off? Is he really the guy who started the puck drop? I guess it would be nice if it’s mentioned somehow in an old game report from 1900. Have you ever run across anything to prove what has appeared any number of times in books?

In my own work, I often ask questions of my fellow writers/researchers, or experts in the field, or to the editors I’m working with. Whenever I do, I want an answer NOW! So, when people ask me, I try to respond as quickly as possible As soon as I received Don’s email, I gave him a call. We mostly talked about other writing-related things, so that after he received another call he had to take, I ended up texting him my answer:

Regarding Fred Waghorne, no, I’ve never seen any direct proof about the puck drop.

A longtime referee in both hockey and lacrosse, if you Google the name Fred Waghorne, you’ll come across lots of stories about him being the first referee to drop the puck for a face-off. (Also about whether he pioneered the use of whistles among hockey referees, or the old-time practice of using a cowbell instead.) Many of the face-off stories are very similar, though all are pretty vague. Even when they give places and teams, there’s never been any specific date attached. Not even a reliable year. Still, later that afternoon, I went searching for more. Having done this before, I didn’t really expect to find anything … but there are so many old newspapers available online that there didn’t used to bet so it seemed worth a try.

At first, I didn’t find anything. Then I found a story in the Windsor Star from December 19, 1953. It was actually about The Hockey Book, by Bill Roche, which had come out that year. “It is a collection of hockey stories and anecdotes,” the article explains, “by the game’s great personalities — Cyclone Taylor, Art Ross, Newsy Lalonde, and many more who are legendary already… One of the first referees is here, too — Fred C. Waghorne, who changed face-off and other rules.”

Nothing new there … but I have a copy of The Hockey Book. (Art Ross’s copy, in fact, given to him by Bruins chief scout Harold “Baldy” Cotton, and given to me by Ross’s grandson, Art Ross III.) I suppose I must have read Waghorne’s stories before, but now I had reason to read them again. Though he was 88-years-old by then, and it was some 50 years after the fact, here’s what Waghorne had to say about face-offs:

When young fans see hockey played these days, the face-off that starts play must seem to be a simple, obvious thing. The referee just tosses the puck between a pair of sticks and the game is on. But it wasn’t always done that way. There were years of exasperating and often painful experiences for referees before the present style of face-off was instituted. I know, because I’m the referee who brought it about.

First, I should point out that it was not “invented” by any great wave of mental brilliance on my part. I was really just acting in self-defence and trying something that would speed up the game.

Face-offs in the early days of hockey were similar to what they still are in lacrosse. The referee would place the puck on the ice between the blades of the centers’ sticks, lean over the puck to line up the sticks fairly, step back, and shout, “Play!” But, as Waghorne explains, things seldom worked out that way.

Just after the referee had placed puck and sticks, and before he had time to move out of range, one centreman would feel the other fellow’s stick wiggling a bit, and he’d try to beat the other boy to the draw. Both would start to slash and swipe at the puck. And before the referee could move away, he’d often get banged by a stick on a shin or toe. Also, every time the centremen started chopping away before the official had a chance to give the signal, the puck had to be faced-off again. This held up play so often that it got to be monotonous.

Waghorne explains that around the year 1900, he refereed a game in Southwestern Ontario. He could no longer remember the place, “but it was in the Brantford-Paris-Woodstock area.” The rival centers were definitely cheating on the draw that night, and Waghorne was tired of it.

I said to myself, “To heck with the rules in this case!” Then I told the centremen what I was going to do. They were to place their blades on the ice about a foot and a half apart and I’d stand back and toss the puck between their sticks. After the rubber hit the ice, they could do as they darned well pleased.

Waghorne says his face-off experiment worked out well, and that he kept thinking about it.

The following winter, having journeyed to Ottawa to referee a National Hockey Association game between the Ottawa Silver Seven and Renfrew, I was ready with a suggestion when asked to handle an amateur playoff at Almonte between teams from Arnprior and Renfrew… I told the clubs’ officers of my face-off innovation and proposed that it be tried in the game coming up at Almonte. They agreed.

Waghorne explains that after that game, “the new face-off spread rapidly across Eastern Canada, and eventually all leagues, both amateur and pro, made it official.”

So, there it was from the man himself.

But there were still plenty of problems.

Leaving out the question of where the game around 1900 had been played, there was the fact that the National Hockey Association wasn’t formed until the winter of 1909–10. So, if the Renfrew-Arnprior game at Almonte had been “the following winter” as Waghorne remembered it, he had either tried out his new face-off as late as the 1908–09 season … or “the following winter” actually had to be closer to 1901 and therefore several years before the start of the NHA. Also, Ottawa’s early hockey dynasty didn’t become known as the Silver Seven until winning the Stanley Cup for the first time in the spring of 1903. (And only until about 1906.) So it seemed likely to me this had all happened between 1900 and 1906.

I knew (and confirmed with some quick online research) that hockey playoffs between the Upper Ottawa Valley Hockey League and the Lower Ottawa Valley Hockey League for the Citizen Shield (donated by the Ottawa Citizen) had begun around that time. In the winter of 1902–03, it turned out. So searching for a playoff game between Arnprior and Renfrew played in Almonte in 1903 or 1904 seemed like a good place to start.

It proved easy enough to find!

As it turns out, Waghorne journeyed to Ottawa late in February of 1904 — 120 years ago this week — when the Toronto Marlboros (for whom he was a club executive) faced the Silver Seven for the Stanley Cup on the 23rd and the 25th of that month. As it happens, on Friday night, February 26, 1904, Arnprior beat Renfrew 6–2 in a game played on neutral ice in Almonte to win the championship the Upper Ottawa Valley Hockey League and the right to meet the champions of the Lower Ottawa Valley Hockey League for the Citizen Shield.

The referee that night?

Fred Waghorne.

The game report in the Ottawa Citizen from Saturday, February 27, notes how “well pleased” everyone was with the job Waghorne had done. There’s also coverage in the Ottawa Journal that Saturday saying Waghorne “gave perfect satisfaction.”  No mention in those game stories about face-offs, but in a further story about the game in the Ottawa Citizen on Tuesday, March 1, 1904, the unnamed writer goes to great lengths in explaining the fine job Waghorne did in keeping the two teams under control in a contest where “The crowd was prepared to be treated to a slugging match.” The writer later noted:

Another little incident that impressed the spectators as being an improvement over the eastern style of play was that, in facing the puck … instead of letting the two men bang it around, each trying to have the advantage over the other … the referee simply dropped the rubber between their sticks and the game was on the moment it touched the ice…”

So, it would seem that February 26, 1904, is the true start date for the modern face-off.

As to the earlier game where Waghorne first tried it, that’s proven harder to pin down.

Newspaper stories from his hometown in Toronto in the 1920s make it fairly clear that Waghorne didn’t begin to referee games in the Ontario Hockey Association until the winter of 1902–03. Maybe not until 1903–04. Prior that that, he only seems to be involved in hockey through local Toronto leagues.

Searching the Toronto Star, the earliest reference I found to Waghorne in the OHA comes on December 29, 1902, when it was reported he was a referee in the OHA’s Intermediate division. Group 12 in the OHA intermediate series had teams in Brantford and Paris. Group 13 had teams in Simcoe, Stratford, Ingersoll, and Woodstock. So, it it all fits pretty nicely. Then again, going through the Globe as well circa 1902 to 1904, it doesn’t look like Waghorne actually called OHA games on a regular basis until the 1903–04 season … which matches a Star Weekly story from March 24, 1928, saying he didn’t begin in the OHA until his friend William Hewitt (Foster’s father) became the league secretary in December of 1903. So, maybe all the face-off stuff actually happened during the 1903–04 season?

Of course, there’s always the chance that Fred Waghorne merely popularized something he’d seen from someone else and then outlasted them so that he became the “inventor.” That same Star Weekly story about his 25-year-career as a referee says only that Waghorne “was one of the first to introduce the dropping of the puck,” not THE first. Then again, no one else ever came forward to claim the distinction. So, if Waghorne was remembering correctly that the Arnprior–Renfrew game in Almonte had come “the following season” after his first face-off experience in Brantford, Paris, or Woodstock, there’s a decent chance that happened during the 1902–03 season. But maybe it really was earlier in 1903–04. (For what it’s worth, I’m beginning to like the chances that’s actually the case.)

No luck yet in tracking down a face-off story from any of those cities in those years.

Good luck to anyone who wants to take on that challenge … and I want to hear about it if you find it!

Oh, and about the bells and whistles, here’s what Fred Waghorne had to say about that in The Hockey Book:

One hundred years ago today, on January 25, 1924, the first Winter Olympics opened in Chamonix, France. Although the International Olympic Committee had decided to hold a winter sports week when Paris was awarded the Summer Games at its meetings in Lausanne, Switzerland, in June of 1921, and the French Olympic Committee confirmed the events in June of 1922, the competition was originally known as the “International Winter Sports Week” — even though it actually stretched for 12 days until February 5, 1924. It was retroactively confirmed as the first Olympic Winter Games at the IOC congress in Prague in May of 1925.

I’ve written several stories over the years about hockey at the Olympics, including the 1924 gold medal victory of the Toronto Granites, the 1920 victory by the Winnipeg Falcons, and the 1928 win by the Toronto Varsity Grads. But this is a story about the 1924 U.S. Olympic hockey team — the silver medalists behind Canada — and one member of the team in particular: Clarence John “Taffy” Abel. The nickname, apparently, comes from his childhood love of the sticky candy.

Some of you reading this will recognize Abel’s name.

Some will even know the story.

But many won’t.

So, here we go.

I believe the first time I ever heard the name Taffy Abel was from Alex Levinsky. Levinsky was one of the first Jewish players in the NHL during the 1930s and a relative by marriage of the former wife of a cousin of mine. I met him at a handful of large family gatherings in the late 1980s. Back then, I didn’t know nearly as much about hockey history as I do now (and I’d never heard of Levinsky) but it was always fascinating to talk with him. He was a defenseman — as was Abel — and I remember him telling me once how difficult it was for any NHL forwards to get past Abel and his New York Rangers defense partner Ching Johnson … particularly in the days before forward passing was allowed in the offensive zone. Howie Morenz, the top NHL forward of this era, stood only 5’9″ and weighed just 165 pounds, and even other forwards who were as tall as 5’11” rarely weighed more than 180. Ching Johnson was 5’11” and 210 pounds, while Taffy Abel stood 6’1″ and weighed 225 pounds. Together, they formed a formidable barrier!

Levinsky faced his share of prejudice as a Jewish player in the NHL in the 1930s. Much of what’s reported is just the sort of casual racism that was typical of the time. I’m sure he encountered plenty of worse things that didn’t make the newspapers given that his Jewish background was well known. But nobody knew Taffy Abel’s true story. Born on May 28, 1900, in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, Abel was actually Native American — a Chippewa — who spent most of his life passing for white, which he began to do as a young boy in order to avoid being sent to an Indian boarding school.

Taffy Abel died in 1964, but in recent years, George Jones, a nephew, has been trying to get the NHL to officially recognize Abel’s role in breaking the NHL colour barrier when he first joined the Rangers in 1926. It has proven to be an uphill battle. Other, later, players of colour — Larry Kwong, who was Chinese, Fred Sasakamoose, who was Indigenous, and Willie O’Ree, who was Black — had no way to hide their racial features. But Abel — though apparently listed as Chippewa, along with his mother and sister, in the 1908 “Durant Roll” (a basic census count of Native Americans named for an agent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs) — was able to pass for white. So, nobody knew the truth at the time.

According to Jones, Abel didn’t announce his Native heritage until the death of his mother in 1939, which was five years after his NHL career ended. With support from the Sault Ste. Marie Band of Chippewa Indians, Abel was inducted posthumously into the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame in 1989. He was later among those the National Museum of the American Indian honoured in a roster featured in its 2012 “Native Olympians” exhibition. Several Native Americans — including Jim Thorpe — had competed at the Stockholm Olympics in the summer of 1912, and Taffy Abel is now considered the first Native American Winter Olympic athlete … although — as with his NHL career — nobody knew that in 1924, when he was a late addition to the U.S. team.

A charter member of the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in 1973, Abel’s biography on their website says he began to play hockey in 1918. He likely started earlier than that. The website of the Society for International Hockey Research begins tracking him with a Michigan Soo team during the winter of 1917–18. After four more seasons in his hometown, Abel moved on to the powerhouse St. Paul Saints of the United States Amateur Hockey Association in 1922–23. He was with that team again to start the 1923–24 season before being added to the U.S. Olympic team.

The American team departed for Europe from New York on January 9, 1924, and Abel wrote about the voyage in a letter to Charles Bye of Sault Ste. Marie. The letter was dated January 19, after arrival in Cherbourg, France, and appeared in the local Evening News on February 2. Abel writes of a rough passage after hitting a storm four days out from New York. “[W]e managed to come out of it all right except for missing a few meals,” he said. “It was five days before we finally came out of the gale. I was sure glad when we landed.”

By the time the story was printed, the U.S. hockey team had already scored a 19–0 win over Belgium, a 22–0 win over France, an 11–0 win over Great Britain, and then defeated Sweden 20–0 on February 1 to advance to the gold medal game on February 3. Abel had written before the competition started that it looked like a certainty that the United States would meet Canada in the final (Canada put up even more lopsided wins en route to the big game), but that the Americans would need to improve their teamwork from the few games they had played together in Boston before leaving for France. “If we play that way against Canada,” Abel worried, “they will need an adding machine to keep track of their scores.”

Still, Abel promised better things. “If the forward line will give [goalie Al “Frenchy”] LaCroix, [defense partner Irv] Small and myself just one goal to work on, we swear we will eat the puck before we let them score.”

The Americans did get one goal … but Canada scored six to win the gold medal. According to a story in the Pittsburgh Gazette Times on February 22, 1924, Abel believe the best team won that day, although he was convinced the Americans could have been better. “The Granites beat us on the merits of the teams as they lined up,” said Abel, “but I’ll never be satisfied that they could not be beaten if America had sent over its best available hockey team. They were too strong for us as things were in France, but if the best possible team had been picked and the best possible men had gone over, after having had plenty of practice, America would have won.”

Taffy Abel would never have another chance to win Olympic gold. He later won the Stanley Cup with the New York Rangers in 1928 and again with the Chicago Blackhawks in 1934. Metis players Tony Gingras and brothers Magnus and Rod Flett won the Stanley Cup with the Winnipeg Victorias in 1901 and 1902. Abel is the first Native American to have won the Cup, and the first to do so with an NHL team … but the complicated legacy of early Indigenous players has made such feats difficult to track.

As George Jones told Stephen Whyno of the Associate Press for a story about Abel in December of 2022: “The reason he had to pass was not one of choice — it was one of survival. I’m proud of him, what he did — very proud. I know what he had to go through and the internal torment that he had to go through as part of this ‘passing’ thing. He had depression, he had drinking problems, but he survived.”

This is, I guess, a sequel of sorts to my recent story about Walter Smaill. When finishing up my research for that one, I came across a cartoon and a brief story in the Calgary Herald from February 27, 1932. It reported on Helge Bostrom of the Chicago Black Hawks (two words in those days; not Blackhawks) who had recently been cut for 140 stitches. Having previously suffered some 100 stitches from various minor injuries, Bostrom was now considered hockey’s Most-Stitched Player. “The former title holder,” the story reported, “… was Walter Smaill, of the old Montreal Wanderers, who suffered 168 in his career.”

The 1931–32 season marked Helge Bostrom’s third year in the NHL. He’d just turned 36 years old when he joined the Black Hawks in January of 1930, and had played plenty of hockey before that. His earliest records place him in military and patriotic hockey leagues in his home town of Winnipeg (some sources say he was born in Gimli, Manitoba), playing for the Ypres team against Walter Smaill’s Somme in 1917–18. After a year of military service in England and France, Bostrom played two seasons of amateur hockey with the Moose Jaw Maple Leafs in Saskatchewan before turning pro with the Edmonton Eskimos of the Western Canada Hockey League during the 1921–22 season.

Mostly a hard-hitting defensemen, but also something of a penalty shot specialist (in those days, penalty shots were taken from a fixed point, so a powerful blast was key), Bostrom helped Edmonton to a WCHL title in 1922–23, before a Stanley Cup loss to the Ottawa Senators. He spent the next four seasons with the Vancouver Maroons before top-level pro hockey collapsed in the west after the 1925–26 season. He then played three-plus seasons with the Minneapolis Millers of the American Hockey Association before finally entering the NHL.

As to the injury in question, Bostrom was hurt during the second period of a 1–1 tie with the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden on November 24, 1931. There’s not a lot of details about the injury in most game stories. The New York Times says nothing at all, noting only that Bostrom (they spell it Bostrum — as many papers did) was in the penalty box when the Rangers scored their only goal late in the first period. (Chicago tied the game late in the third period.) The New York Daily News reports, “The second session was marked only by an injury to Helge Bostrum … who cut a tendon in his leg in a mixup with [Earl] Seibert.”

Of the newspapers I’ve been able to check, the Montreal Gazette and the Brooklyn Times-Union had the most to say about Bostrom’s injury in their game reports the next day. “Early in the second period,” says the Gazette, “Bostrum was assisted off the ice after colliding heavily with Seibert and it was afterwards announced that the burly defence man had cut a tendon in his left leg.” The account in the Brooklyn paper says, “Bostrum was injured by a skate when he checked Seibert in the second period.”

The Times-Union story says it was Bostrom’s instep that was cut — though most stories later would say his ankle — “and the discovery of a severed tendon means that he will be lost to the team for several weeks.” The Brooklyn paper further notes that “Bostrum’s foot was to be operated on today.” A later story in the Chicago Tribune on December 6, 1931, reports that Bostrom was still in New York’s Polyclinic hospital when his Black Hawks teammates visited him there on a return trip to New York prior to a game that night against the Americans. The operation was likely performed there, as Madison Square Garden and New York Rangers team doctor Henry O. Clauss Jr. was a member of the surgical staff at the Polyclinic.

In recalling the injury in the New York Times on January 4, 1932, John Kieran writes: “Remember the night Helge Bostrum of the Hawks was hurt at the Garden? Ankle cut by Earl Seibert’s skate. Didn’t seem so bad as he hobbled off the ice, but when Dr. Clauss checked up, three of the four tendons were cut and before they got through patching him up, they took exactly 142 stitches to pull him together.” (Stories in other newspapers put the number of stitches at 140 or 145, but the Minneapolis Star-Tribune asked “What’s [a] Mere 400 Stitches” in a headline above a story about Bostrom on February 12, 1932.)

Despite the early report that he would be sidelined for several weeks, word soon was Bostrom might never play hockey again. That was certainly a fear Black Hawks coach Emil Iverson expressed in a story reported in The Minneapolis Star on December 11, 1931. A story in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle a month later, on January 10, 1932, explained more:

It was cruel the way the accident happened…Earl Seibert just stumbled over the half-prone Helge in a harmless-looking mixup around center ice. But the tip of Seibert’s skate bit like a rapier down to the bone, slashing tendon after tendon. The cut wasn’t more than an inch and a half long and the surgeons had to lengthen it, reach up and pull down the muscles, and fasten them. When they knit together Bostrom will be able to walk without even the semblance of a limp, but the repairs may not be able to hold under the strain of those sudden stops in hockey.

Apparently — according to a story in The Minneapolis Journal six years later (February 17, 1938) — things were so dire that Bostrom was receiving ads from casket owners (casket makers?) while he was in the Polyclinic hospital. But Helge was having none of it!

By early February of 1932, Bostrom was in the Twin Cities and skating again. “Out of hockey, nothing,” he roared for an Associated Press story out of St. Paul that appeared in papers on February 12. “I’ll be playing again before the season’s over.” The day before, The Minneapolis Star quoted him saying, “Whoever said I wouldn’t be able to play hockey again is crazier than the hombre who insists that the Hawks won’t be in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Why, I expect to be in those same playoffs myself.”

And he was.

Maybe.

Bostrom was back in action on February 17, 1932, when the Black Hawks hosted the Canadiens in Chicago. According to the NHL game logs, he played in seven more games after that, but then missed the next five, before returning for two playoff games against the Toronto Maple Leafs. The strange thing is, the newspaper accounts of games late that season don’t always match up with the NHL records. And for sure, those records must have it wrong when they show Bostrom playing in Boston on November 26, 1931 — two days after the injury. It seems highly unlike that he was hurt that badly on November 24, had surgery on November 25, played in Boston on November 26, and then returned to New York to spend another week or more in hospital there.

Regardless of how many games Bostrom actually played in 1931–32, he was not only back with the Black Hawks for the 1932–33 season, he was named the team’s new captain. But that December, he was traded to the St. Paul Greyhounds of the American Hockey Association, where he would be their player-coach. Bostrom continued to play in minor league cities through the 1935–36 season, finishing up with the Kansas City Greyhounds, whom he would later coach for two years from 1937 through 1939.

And tough as he must have been, it seems Helge Bostrom may have done more for the sport of figure skating than hockey. According to Roy Shipstead, one of the founders of the Ice Follies, Bostrom gave the struggling Roy, his older brother Eddie, and their partner Oscar Johnson, a significant boost. Shipstead told the story to Vern De Geer of the Gazette for his column on February 1, 1961 while in Montreal for the Canadian Figure Skating Championship.

It wasn’t easy. We were fancy skating bugs in St. Paul when most of our neighborhood pals were busy on the hockey rink. Most of the hockey players were coming in from Western Canada. They were making good money and it looked like a good career for Minnesota boys. But it was one of those imports who persuaded me to follow Eddie and Oscar in the ice skating entertainment business.

Helge Bostrom, a fun-loving Norwegian friend of ours from Winnipeg, recommended us to an entertainment booker at the Chicago Sherman Hotel’s famous College Inn. That was in 1935. We were given four weeks trial and stayed for 16 months. It was the success of this run that started us in the travelling carnival routine the next year. And we’ve been at it ever since. We’ll be forever grateful to Helge for this.